National Basketball Association

Dirk Nowitzki is a slow man and not ashamed of it

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

foxsports

It’s been kind of a slow day on the internet. Summer is a slow time for basketball fans. There’s not a whole lot going on in September. The Olympics are over. The next season is still more than a month away. Players are resting, or training, or sending their kids to school. Highlights of last season are starting to get stale. So is that sandwich that I have in the fridge. I should do something about that with my mouth. I have some laundry to do as well. Maybe I can slow cook some beef. Maybe not. That involves effort. It’s like life is in a permanent state of buffering. This is ennui. Ennui is a weird word. Words are weird. Words. Sigh. I wonder what Dirk Nowitzki is doing on Twitter.

Ha. Spot on. Only problem is I ran like that my whole career…. https://t.co/QoG4yHjvET

— Dirk Nowitzki (@swish41) September 8, 2016

It used to be quick sand. Now it's full on dry cement…. https://t.co/QoG4yHjvET

— Dirk Nowitzki (@swish41) September 8, 2016

It’s nice that he has a sense of humor about himself. In fact, Dirk just seems like a nice guy. The type of guy you could spend a lazy Saturday afternoon with. No plans. No anything.

He’s kind of right, though. Below is a video of Dirk Nowitzki running at full speed.

I can hear tires screeching in my head, except it sounds more like molasses being poured out of a five gallon tub. Or whatever sound glass makes as it collects to the bottom of a windowsill over the course of a few hundred years. I think that’s the doppler effect at work.

But Dirk has never really been quick. He is unlikely to get quicker. So using science, I decided to graph out what his velocity might be over time.

Dirk is kinda slow.

My apologies that the GIF goes so slowly. It’s kind of just a hypnotic, laconic step. The thing about things that are slow is that eventually they come to a stop.